When Dale Earnhardt Jr. pushed Jimmie Johnson to a victory at Talladega Superspeedway in 2011, he certainly didn’t realize the perks that came with it.
On the final lap of the Aaron’s 499, the Hendrick Motorsports teammates were paired up tandem-style for a finish that went into the record books. Johnson and Earnhardt ran fifth and sixth coming out of Turn 4, when suddenly, the racing icons got a massive run through the tri-oval. They dove to the bottom underneath Richard Childress Racing’s Clint Bowyer and Kevin Harvick on the top, and fellow Hendrick drivers Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin in the middle.
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With Earnhardt pushing as hard as he could, he and Johnson had just enough momentum for the No. 48 driver to reach the checkered flag 0.002 seconds before Bowyer could, tying Kurt Busch and Ricky Craven (Darlington, 2003) for the closest finish in NASCAR Cup Series history at the time.
“Junior and I get disconnected [entering Turn 3], we had such a run, I didn’t know where to go with the run,” Johnson explained. “Fortunately, we get reconnected, and just wondering where’s an opening going to come from. And [the other four cars] start racing each other on the high side and give us that lane on the bottom, and I have no idea if we’re going to get there. But Junior’s pushing, pushing, pushing.
“That was just such a wild form of racing. We were working on different iterations and how we communicate with the car that’s pushing with you, how the spotters work. Of course, through Hendrick cars, we were trying to team up … we had an agreement that coming to the checkered, if we’re nose-to-tail, we’re going to race but in a pack like that, and the goal was to get a Hendrick car to Victory Lane.”
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While Johnson basked in the winning sun, he credited the win to Earnhardt, who crossed the line fourth.
“The evolution of the way Dale Jr. thinks about things — I felt like we had the best scenario with our spotters, the way they were giving us information, the way we could communicate to one another, and we really perfected this style of racing,” Johnson explained. “I give all the credit, most of the credit, to Junior, and just the way he was thinking was out of the norm.”
Before Johnson drove to Victory Lane, he sought out Earnhardt and gave him the checkered flag. And as another gift, he sent a large sum of beer to the Earnhardt residence.
“I think it was 50 cases of beer to his house in thanks,” Johnson chuckled. “I will accept these, but let’s not consider that the fee. He wanted me to push him to a win.”
Sunday’s annual springtime battle at Talladega is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET (FOX, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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